A year later and Intel's Extreme Edition team has obviously been sitting by the pool, sipping Pina Coladas and playing DayZ. Nothing else can explain why this year's Extreme Edition is such an underwhelming product. Let's take a look at what's changed (not much), how much faster it is (very little) and whether you should sell your little sister into slavery to buy one (it depends on how annoying she is).
SAME OLD, SAME OLD
When the i7 3960x released at the end of 2011, it was built using the Sandy Bridge architecture (a quick refresher for the noobs - the architecture is basically the blueprint of the CPU, which determines how it works). However, the Sandy Bridge design was almost a year old by that stage, having debuted in January 2011 as the mainstream second generation Core CPU. The first batch of Sandy Bridge chips were either dual or quad core models and, to the delight of performance hungry PC garners, were very, very fast. They also overclocked like a bat out of hell.
It took Intel another ten months to release an enthusiast edition of Sandy Bridge with six cores, the i7 3960x Extreme Edition, codenamed Sand Bridge E. The move up to six cores meant the chip was physically bigger than the standard Sandy Bridge chips, and it also required more pins to connect to the motherboard. As a result Intel released the Socket 2011 platform at the same time, giving its new megachip a place to call home. With the increase in transistor count necessary to deliver two additional cores (transistors are the building blocks of CPUs), everybody expected a premium price, but nobody could have guessed just how expensive the 3960x would turn out to be. At around AU$1200, it was almost 300 per cent of the price of the best Sandy Bridge processors, yet would only offer a 50 per cent performance increase, and even then only in extremely rare circumstances. Despite the insane pricing, Intel had captured the rich end of town, and AMD didn't have a reply.
IVY UPGRADE
Just six months after releasing the 3960x, Intel shipped out its latest mainstream CPU design, codenamed Ivy Bridge. Consumers knew of it as the 3rd Generation Core CPU. Arriving around April of 2012, this was an interesting refresh to Intel's CPU architecture, as most of the R&D love was poured into the integrated graphics section of the lw Bridge CPU, with minimal attention to the traditional processing areas. When compared to Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge was only slightly better at purely CPU focused duties. However, when it came to integrated graphics performance, it was around twice the speed of its predecessor. Once again, Intel launched its new design in dual and quad core variants, with no sign of the enthusiast six core Extreme Edition at launch. Which brings us to the i7 3970x Extreme Edition, which should have been the six-cored version of lw Bridge. Except, it's not.
LET THE DISAPPOINTMENT COMMENCE
Like the 3960x, the new 3970x follows Intel's tradition of pricing this processor well out of the range of those not related to the Murdoch or Packer clans, at around $1,250 at launch. However, unlike the 3960x, the new megachip doesn't utilize Intel's latest and greatest CPU architecture. Instead of using 2012's Ivy Bridge design, the 3970x falls back on the archaic Sandy Bridge design that debuted in January 2011. Leaked plans show that Intel isn't planning on releasing a six core Ivy Bridge processor until the third quarter of 2013.
But wait, there's even more bad news. 2012's Ivy Bridge processors are built using a cutting-edge 22 nanometre process, yet the 3970x still uses the previous year's 32 nanornetre process. In layman's terms, this means the intricate wires and structures used to build the CPU are around 50 percent larger than they should have been if Intel used its latest technology to build the 3970x. As a result, it uses much more energy than the new Ivy Bridge processors. Higher energy results in higher heat, and the 3970x has a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of a whopping 150W. This was the norm a few years ago, but it's around twice the heat of today's chilled-out, energy efficient products. As a result, you'll need to spend another $100 on a high-end cooler that can handle such a steamy little hothead, as Intel doesn't include a cooler with the 3970x. Hey, if you're only paying $1,200 for your CPU, you can't expect everything, right?
So now that we know the 3970x uses the exact same base design as the 3960x, Sandy Bridge E, you're probably wondering what's new? To be honest, not much.
The only difference is the frequency of the new processor. The base speed jumps from 3.3GHz in the 3960x up to 3.5GHz in the 3970x; a rather pathetic 6% frequency increase. And that's the most impressive part, as the increase in frequency under Turbo mode (the speed when the CPU is doing heavy lifting, which is what PC garners care about) is even less. The older 3960x has a Turbo speed of 3.90Hz, increasing by a laughable 2.5% up to 4GHz in the 3970x. Now, at 4GHz this makes it the fastest desktop processor ever launched by Intel, which would be impressive if it was still only a few hundred MHz faster than much more affordable processors. However, adding insult to injury is the fact that enthusiasts have been eking 4.5GHz to 5GHz speeds out of Intel processors for at least three years. All it takes is a little reading, a custom cooler and ten minutes of tweaking for an overclock to sweep past 4GHz, so the 3970x's frequency nudge really isn't that impressive.
Everything else is identical. Both chips use the Socket 2011 form factor, and include six Hyper-Threaded cores for a total of twelve threads. The L3 cache is an identical, albeit impressive, 15MB, and both use an identical quad-channel DDR3 controller that is only officially rated to handle up to DDR3 1600MHz. Even the instruction sets supported are identical, with no improvements despite 12 months of development. Neither chip has integrated graphics, as this was yanked out on the assumption that most potential users will combine such a powerful CPU with a dedicated videocard. The new chip doesn't even introduce PCI Express 3.0 support, something the rest of Intel's family has been doing for the better part of a year.
In fact, the only other difference is that the slight frequency boost results in a rather hefty leap in TDP from 130W in 2011's high end chip to 150W in the 3970x. That's not anything to be proud of, and reinforces what a shame it is that Intel didn't even try to do a manufacturing process shrink on this product.
OVERCLOCKING
If there's one area where there's potential excitement over the 3970x, it's overclocking. This is because mature designs tend to overclock better than when they first launch. CPU designs are so brain-burstingly complex that, when they're brand new, there are lots of kinks in the manufacturing process. In fact, many of the CPUs rolling off the factory line don't even work. Over time the process matures and the wrinkles get ironed out, which results in more working products, but also in chips that tend to overclock better than their virgin versions. With almost two years of Sandy Bridge manufacturing experience behind it, it's using a very refined manufacturing technique, so there's the real potential that the 3970x could be a killer overclocker.
On the other hand, heat is major issue when overclocking. Overclocked CPUs get hot, and when a CPU gets too hot it stops working.
With six cores pumping out enough heat to warm a small office, the 3970x needs some seriously good cooling to remove the additional heat generated by increasing the voltage and frequency We used the new Corsair H100i integrated water cooling kit as reviewed in the last issue of PCPP to tame Intel's new beast. The fact that this CPU is multiplier unlocked makes it an absolute cinch to overclock, and within an hour we'd found our stable top speed. 4.5GHz was as far as she could go without benchmarks crashing and burning, with a maximum core voltage of 1.35V. Unfortunately, that's identical to the speed our older i7 3960x maxes out at, yet another disappointing nail in the i7 3970x's anticlimactic coffin.
So far, so very lacklustre, and we didn't expect the story to change with our benchmarks. To test the speed of this new processor we used Intel's new DX79SR motherboard, paired with 8GB of Patriot's Viper 3 Intel Extreme Masters Memory running at DDR3 1600MHz. For comparison, we used the Intel i7 3960x in the DX79SI motherboard, as well as the i7 3770K processor in a Gigabyte G1 Sniper 3 motherboard. An NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 was used in all machines to ensure the GPU wasn't the bottleneck, while a Kingston HyperX SSD provided storage duties.
The first test off the ranks is something we don't use very often: 3DMark Vantage's CPU score. We used this benchmark here as its one of the very few that leverages every single core in a multi-cored CPU, which is why the six-cored 17 3970x totally whipped the quad cored i7 3770K. That's nice and all, but doesn't really reflect real world gaming performance; instead it shows what might be possible in the future when more game-coders get their head around multithreaded programming.
Next up was H.A.W.X. 2, which is very CPU-limited if the resolution is set low enough. We ran at 800 x 600, much to the dismay of our Ultra HD Dell U3011 testbench monitor, and the 3970x once again took the lead. However, it's worth pointing out that the 3970x was only nine percent faster than the i7 3770K, a CPU that is less than a third of the cost of the 3970x! Dirt 3 painted a very similar story. Running at 800 x 600 to ensure we were only seeing the CPU performance, the 3970x edged out its predecessor to take top spot, but was only 20% faster than the much more affordable i7 3770K.
Now, most PC gamers don't run their games at these resolutions, so we ran our next test at 1920 x 1080, with Ultra detail, to see what the real world experience is like. Borderlands 2 is a very pretty game, and to our surprise the $300-something i7 3770k actually beat the $1,250 3790x, with a small 6% lead.
The final benchmark was thrown in to illustrate who the 3970x is really intended for - users of heavily threaded creativity applications, such as video editors or visual designers.
Cinebench 11.5 is a free benchmark that taps into every core to render a 3D image, and the 3970x ran rings around the 3770K with a 54% speed increase. If you're spending huge chunks of your day waiting for 3D images or movies to render out, the 3970x will pay for itself in a matter of days, but that's the only kind of user who will benefit from this chip.
I AM DISAPPOINT
With no competition from AMD, Intel had absolutely no reason to make the i7 3970x a better CPU. Technically, it is indeed the fastest desktop CPU on the planet, provided you don't take overclocking into account. The problem is that it's not that much faster than CPUs that are a quarter of the price, and can actually be slower when the load passes back to your GPU. If PC games took advantage of multicore processors, it'd be a different story, which would also make AMD's eight core chips shine... but they don't. So why spend $1,200 on a CPU when the $300 version will feel identical in your games? Throw overclocking into the picture and - if you're lucky - a 5GHz i7 3770K will run rings around the 4.5GHz i7 3970x, so you're actually paying four times more for lower performance.
The 3970x is the kind of product launch we can look forward to if AMD ever stops making CPUs. so let's hope that AMD can start to deliver desktop CPUs that are close to Intel in the most demanding games. If they can't, we'll probably see CPU evolution slow even further than the glacial pace of the last few years.
